Two wedding gifts that Frances may have brought to her new home were a "garnish of pewter," that is a full set of pewter platters, plates and dishes, and a bread "peel," which was significant of domestic utility, plenty, and was a symbol of good luck. These were favorite wedding gifts then. Glass and earthenware were scarce at that time because of breakage on the trip across the Atlantic. An inventory later on shows that Frances had only twelve glasses and not more than eighty-eight pieces of earthenware. Silver plate was abundant in the homes of the wealthy.
At the time of their marriage Frances' husband was a member of the House of Burgesses. Later (1679-89) he was Secretary of the Colony which made him, next to the Governor, probably the most powerful man in Virginia at that time. People started calling his home on Nomini River, Secretary's Point, by which name it was ever after known.
Colonel Spencer's neighbors named their parish "Cople" in honor of his ancestral parish in Bedfordshire, England.
About 1675 Colonel Spencer and John Washington procured a patent for five thousand acres of land on Little Hunting Creek, which later became famous as the Mount Vernon estate. This land descended to the heirs of Spencer and Washington.
Colonel Spencer became President of the Council, which was a position of great honor and dignity. As President of the Council in the absence of the Governor, his cousin Lord Culpeper, he became acting governor from 1683-84.
"Madam Spencer," as Frances was now respectfully addressed, had seen many changes since she had left her wilderness playground in the Northern Neck, to become for awhile the "First Lady of Jamestown." She had borne six children. One son went to England and remained there to claim the large estates which his father had inherited.
After Governor Spencer's death Frances married Reverend John Bolton.
LAND
"Clear titles" to their lands were extremely important to the landholders of the Northern Neck, probably because for many years due to the proprietary their land was not wholly their own.
To the natives of the Neck, land was an almost sacred possession. To acquire more and more of it was an obsession with some of them. Land was their wealth—without it tobacco could not be grown. The virgin soil lasted only about three years under tobacco cultivation. It was easier and cheaper to look for new lands than to enrich old acreage so the planter was always looking for new lands, in the fertile river margins or in the vast forests. It was a wasteful system.